


You Kept This?

by jesuisherve



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Memories, Platonic Relationships, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3470969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesuisherve/pseuds/jesuisherve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie and Mac look through a box of stuff from when they were in school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Kept This?

“Hey!” Charlie exclaimed. “What’s all this?”

“Huh?” said Mac, rolling over from his position on his bed. He was working out a plan on paper to show Dennis later and Charlie was sitting on the floor, rooting through shit from Mac’s closet. Mac didn’t mind if Charlie looked through his stuff. Charlie had usually been with him when he got new stuff.

Mac took the pen he had been sucking on out of his mouth. “Hey! That’s all my old school junk.”

Charlie had pulled out a cardboard box that was stuffed with papers and photographs. He had the box between his legs and had already starting taking things out. Mac swung his legs off the side of the bed and settled on the floor with Charlie, leaning his back against the bedframe.

“You kept this?” Charlie said in a tiny voice. He held up a drawing of what appeared to be lizard ninjas. It had Charlie’s name scrawled in the corner. Mac’s name was laboriously printed right underneath Charlie’s signature, too.

Mac’s first reaction was to be defensive, to tell Charlie that he didn’t know it was in there and hadn’t thought about it in years, but the sincerity on Charlie’s face told him he couldn’t do that. “Yeah, bro. You drew it for me.”

It had been a thank you gift from Charlie in grade nine for helping him complete his English project. Mac had patiently read him the whole book and had walked him through each of the reading questions. He had even written down everything Charlie said to bypass the exasperating step of watching the kid do it on his own.

A smile crept over Charlie’s face. “Look, here’s another one.” This one depicted what Mac now recognized as a prototype of Dayman and Nightman. In the drawing, they were fighting and it had both their names written in the corner like the first one. He hadn’t realized that those characters had been in Charlie’s head since high school.

“I think this was for helping me with science class,” Charlie mused.

Mac shook his head. “No, for social sciences.” That had been a tough class to help Charlie through. It was harder to cheat in social sciences because Mac had a hard time with it, too. Dennis had helped them both out a little, but getting his help was a pain. He’d get frustrated quickly and resort to yelling. Because of that, Charlie didn’t like getting help from him that often. Neither did Mac, for that matter.

“Remember when you used to sing those songs when we were in school?” Mac said.

“I sing songs now,” Charlie objected.

“No, I know,” Mac said. “But I mean the songs you used to write every time we passed a class.”

Charlie’s smile grew bigger. He hadn’t written those songs to celebrate passing a class, he had written them for Mac as gifts, just the same as the drawings. He could remember some of them vaguely. If he really tried, he probably could rewrite them and play them again if Mac really wanted.

“Do... do you want me to try and write them again?” Charlie asked shyly.

Mac glanced at Charlie, his eyebrows shooting up into a ‘V’ shape. “I mean... if you want to, you could.”

Charlie looked down at the drawings he held in his hands. He remembered how much time he had spent on these when they were kids, bent over the paper until his nose was almost touching it with pencil crayons held tightly in his fist. In high school, the other kids would laugh at his drawings. They weren’t as good as the kids in art class, but he put everything into drawing. Mac never laughed when Charlie presented the drawings to them. He always said a solemn ‘thank you’ and tucked them into his backpack (or into his pocket when he forgot his backpack at home.)

Mac took the drawings from Charlie to look through them. A photo slipped out from between the pages. “Hey, this is when we were on the lacrosse team!” He picked it up and showed it to Charlie. There were two rows of boys lined up and their coach standing on the left side. Charlie was in the front because he was small, and Mac was standing right behind him. Charlie looked a little rough with a band-aid on his face but his smile was huge. Little Mac had a smile to match Charlie’s and he looked just as rough. Both of them were a lot rougher than the other boys on the team with their frayed jeans and too-big shirts.

“Look there’s Dennis!” Charlie said, stabbing a finger at the photo. Dennis was tall with ruffled hair and a perfectly cut shirt. “Too bad we never got to play,” Charlie continued.

Mac shrugged his shoulders. That was true. They never saw a game. Well, Dennis did, but Mac had gotten into a fight with a boy named Shawn Ellis and was removed from the team. Charlie quit soon after because the team wasn’t the same without Mac. The only consolation was that Dennis got kicked off the team as well. He claimed it was because it wasn’t fair to pit him against the other teams, but they knew better. He had done dismally in the first game and had thrown a temper tantrum when the coach benched him.

But the picture was enough for Charlie.

And the drawings were enough for Mac. He’d never admit it, but they meant a lot to him. Charlie was his best friend (well, besides Dennis,) and he had plenty of good memories of high school. Even if a lot of those memories was them getting beat up and getting called names.

“Hey, what’s this say?” Charlie asked, taking a book out of the box.

“The Outsiders,” Mac said.

Charlie tilted his head and looked at the cover. “Did we read this in school?”

“I think so, bro. I don’t remember keeping this.”

Charlie held the book out. “Will you read it to me now?”

“Aw, c’mon bro.” Mac groaned and twisted uncomfortably where he was sitting.

Charlie’s face fell. Mac scowled and snatched the book up. “Okay, fine.”

Charlie shifted over until he was sitting with his back against the bed and their shoulders touched.

Mac flipped the book open to the first page. “Alright, ready?”

“Ready.”


End file.
